How many confirmed injuries to ICE agents were reported by DHS or ICE in 2025 and 2026?
Executive summary
DHS and ICE did not publish a single, consolidated tally of “confirmed injuries to ICE agents” for calendar year 2025 or for the first weeks of 2026 in the documents and reporting provided; instead, DHS/ICE communications and media coverage offer incident counts (assaults, vehicular attacks) and case-by-case descriptions that confirm some agent injuries but stop short of an authoritative aggregate number [1] [2] [3]. The clearest DHS figures in the record are counts of assaults and vehicular attacks — 275 reported assaults in 2025 (Jan. 20–Dec. 31, 2025) and 66 vehicular attacks from Jan. 21, 2025–Jan. 7, 2026 — but those figures are not labeled as “confirmed agent injuries” and do not map directly to a distinct injury count [1].
1. What DHS/ICE publicly reported: assaults and vehicular attacks, not a neat injury total
DHS released headline statistics framed as percent increases and raw incident counts — for example, the department said ICE law enforcement experienced 275 assaults during the first year of the administration (Jan. 20–Dec. 31, 2025) and 66 vehicular attacks in the Jan. 21, 2025–Jan. 7, 2026 window — but those figures are described as incidents, not as a definitive count of agents injured, and DHS’s public messaging aimed at showing an “unprecedented” spike rather than reporting a single injury tally [1].
2. Media analyses highlight the gap between incident counts and confirmed injuries
Investigative reporting found that many of the incidents in DHS tallies did not result in serious injuries; the Los Angeles Times’ analysis showed numerous listed assaults produced no injuries, and other outlets noted that DHS did not supply a comprehensive injuries breakdown when asked [2]. Independent analysts and outlets therefore warned against reading DHS’s percentage increases as a direct measure of serious or numerous agent wounds [2] [4].
3. Case-level confirmations: several injured agents documented in reporting
Reporting and DHS/ICE statements do confirm specific agent injuries in named incidents: court records show ICE officer Jonathan Ross suffered wounds to his arm and hand requiring 33 stitches after being dragged during a June 2025 arrest attempt [3], DHS/ICE described an officer being hospitalized after a Minneapolis ambush in January 2025 in which Sosa‑Celis was shot in the leg and an attacked officer was hospitalized [5], and other incidents referenced in news coverage include agents with minor injuries described on body camera or in local reports [6] [2].
4. Official rhetoric, selective disclosures and the difficulty of adding up injuries
DHS’s public releases have a clear advocacy slant — emphasizing percent increases and “worst of the worst” narratives — which complicates independent tallying: press pieces from DHS promote the scale of attacks (e.g., 1,300% increase, 3,200% vehicular attacks increase) while omitting a consolidated count of how many agents were clinically confirmed injured, hospitalized, or sustained long‑term harm [1] [7]. At the same time, independent outlets and watchdogs report that several high-profile incidents did produce confirmed injuries, but those are documented as individual cases rather than summed into a DHS-verified total [3] [5] [2].
5. Honest answer to the central question: no single confirmed injury total published in these sources
Based on the materials provided, there is no DHS- or ICE-published single number labeled “confirmed injuries to ICE agents” for 2025 or for 2026 in the cited reporting; available DHS figures show incident counts (275 assaults in 2025; 66 vehicular attacks Jan. 21, 2025–Jan. 7, 2026) and the record contains several case-level confirmations of injured agents (including Jonathan Ross’s 33‑stitch wounds), but those items do not constitute an official aggregate injuries total reported by DHS/ICE in these sources [1] [3] [5] [2].
6. What would be needed to close the gap
An authoritative answer requires DHS or ICE to publish a breakdown that maps reported incidents to outcomes (no injury, minor injury, hospitalized, fatal) or to respond to oversight requests asking explicitly for “confirmed number of ICE agents injured in 2025 and in 2026 (to date), with severity categories.” Absent such a DHS/ICE dataset in the provided reporting, the only verifiable elements are the department’s incident counts and the case-by-case injury confirmations documented in news and court records [1] [3] [5] [2].